


breathing tells the person what to do

by Kyros (anafabula)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (pigeon meme voice) Is This Fluff?, Beholding powers are their own kink honestly, Consensual Compulsion, Future Fic, Hints of praise kink, Kissing, M/M, Mild D/S undertones, Truth Spells, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Web!Martin, albeit... undernegotiated, asexual dom Jon Sims, mild consent issues inherent to avatars, that’s it, that’s the fic, they’re not human any more and they make out, what does human mean? I mean really?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 14:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15820716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Kyros
Summary: Jon doesn'thaveto kiss Martin for his answers. He doesn't need that just to know. So he must want to.





	breathing tells the person what to do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lontradiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lontradiction/gifts).



> Thanks to everyone with a hand in enabling me, Teawood for typing up my handwritten draft, and the alleged Mr. Martin Spider, who knows why. 
> 
> I waffled on how to warn for this; “fluff post-loss-of-person” is a gray area. Hit me up if you think I should do better and how.

There are times, more often than not, when Martin forgets how little either of them are still human. His frame of reference has vastly shifted, after all, years of seismic new world orders and little day-by-day reshaping of 'normal' feeding into each other, and anyone he can really talk to more than twice is by necessity going to be as inextricably into it as he is. Maybe not as deeply, sure, but it still means Martin's long lost sight of figurative shore, and meanwhile there's almost always something larger to contend with.

So moments like this still happen and when they happen he's still blindsided, and maybe, Martin figures, maybe that right there is the fundamental reason he could never have been Jon.

Jon, for his own part, is staring—not in a weird way, just by default, he's not remembered to blink and it shapes the rest of his focused, intent expression accordingly—and waiting for Martin to answer.

(“And what does happen,” Jon had said, sending Martin's mind skidding to a halt twice over, “what happens,” breathed almost against his lips but Jon pulling back looks unaffected and mildly calculated and _Jon_ , “when our interests _do_ diverge?”)

It was a struggle not to answer then and it's a struggle now, to swallow down articulations of the truth Martin can't bear and search for one he can. Jon's questions fill him now as always with all but unbearable clear light, and it wants—it _needs—_ to be free, to unspool from Martin's open mouth and return to the rightful owner who deserves it. 

Eventually he manages, a bit weak, “We're the Web, Jon. What do you think?”

Martin knows Jon should hate him for it. He should understand what it means—Jon _especially—_ and he should hate him for it, reconsider, recoil. 

Any human being should. Martin knows this so acutely that he'd considered lying if Jon didn't ask.

Of course Jon asked. And he tilts his head now for a second, considering, and he smiles.

“All right,” Jon says. It's an odd smile; Martin's long used to the constant irrational brightness of Jon's eyes, but less so the way for a flash in the middle of the expression the irises are ringed all around in that shining, absolute white.

He'd think he was seeing things, in a different world, but Martin doesn't bother thinking like that anymore. “I... What?”

“I said all right,” Jon says, with the faintest hint of impatience beyond what's inherent.

_“Why?”_

Jon shrugs. “You answered,” he says, utterly and bafflingly unconflicted. “I shouldn't have expected otherwise and I didn't.”

“But—” _Shut up_ , Martin tells the parts of himself vibrating with a mix of appreciation and abstract answering impatience; _shut_ up, _Blackwood_ ; this would be perfectly pleasing from anyone he just wanted the yes from but this is so _Jon_. Why can't he get the Archivist himself to see what the problem with coming that close to his will is? “If—”

“Ah.”

Martin quiets so abruptly he's faintly confused to find the finger on his lips is literal. Then he's blushing. 

Jon's expression doesn't help with that at _all_ , cutting and intent, a face whose earlier iterations Martin's known well but never found fully turned on him. “Martin. I know. I know. You have your master. I have mine.” It's been so long that that's true, Jon's face barely changes with saying it, and noticing that twists through Martin silently. “I know what the Web is. If... When it comes to that, seeing it through you will be a novel experience.” His smile seems wry, but a bit too far away. And again the bright unmistakable white; Martin can't draw comfort from a person's willing lean in, that doesn't belong to them, but Jon is so _Jon_ and he wants nothing else. (Never did, not from him. And if Martin must, when the Eye gets in his way—then not yet.) “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Martin swallows. Jon's taken his hand back to let him speak and he finds it a loss. “I mean. Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Good,” Jon says. He closes his eyes, thinking, and Martin sits with that lack as well. “Now that's dealt with tell me what I _don't_ know,” he says, soft but metered and shedding softness by the second. The power is just there like Jon's been holding it back all the other moments of his life, like a tidal wave crashing into its rightful place even before the question comes. It's entwined ease and might that Martin envies and that he admires, that knocks the breath from him for Jon to finish. “What precisely _does_ the Web intend, Martin? What are you going to do?”

Martin doesn't fight it this time, not when... It's not that he isn't worried, it's just that trying to suppress this means hiding who he is. What he is. And Jon asked, and now Jon's turned toward him expectantly, and it's the easiest and the best thing in the world to give Jon what he wants—to give him everything Martin has—even if the believing that this _is_ what Jon wants comes a bit harder.

Jon leans back toward him and Martin tries to wonder why but keeps talking, and then Jon's lips are at his neck—what? How?—and mouthing at Martin's throat, hot and wet and _interested_ , with that everpresent clinical edge somehow still self-evident.

That _does_ drag Martin to a stop between sentences, as he runs aground on a gasp. “I...”

“Keep going,” Jon murmurs against his skin, pulled away only the bare minimum to be intelligible, breath ghosted over Martin's pulse and Martin's future presumptive bruises. “Keep going. What is the Spider—the Web—what is it doing and _why_ are you doing it? Tell me—” His breath catches and Martin shivers. “Tell me everything.”

“Yes,” Martin says, a little garbled, as his hands find places at Jon's waist and in his hair that he seems pleased with. The compulsion that makes explaining fluid and immediate and—good, still, though different now the Beholding knows Martin's not its own. It keeps him from feeling awkward, of course; it does a slightly less complete job of keeping Martin's speech from wavering as he feels his voice between Jon's teeth.

“Good,” Jon says between questions, setting Martin all the more alight with confusing too-good-to-be-true joy for how it sounds like Jon's talking to himself. _“Good.”_

He kisses Martin just before Martin would have managed to ask for it, between truths, and Martin's hands playing over Jon's spine keep him so close Jon barely pulls back enough for the next.

Martin tells him everything, of course, gives him everything; the weaving, the future, how Martin feels as the avatar (and always the everpresent _Why?_ quick behind). How Martin feels about him. How this feels, now, controlled and intent with focus Martin's well past sharing. What Martin wants, what the Spider wants, though asking the same questions twice is unlike Jon overall. He wraps Jon up close and Jon lets him, leans in, kisses him, and hums against his skin while Jon looks inside himself for what to do next with the bright prismatic well of sunlike knowing or... whatever it's like for Jon. Martin will never really know; he can't.

That's okay, though. He doesn't need to. He kisses Jon back and answers what he asks, the _do you want_ and _how does that feel_ and the _why do you_ and the _so the rite, you said_ alike. Part of him knows he'll pay for that, eventually; he's no amateur, his plans don't hinge on secrecy, but it rarely hurts to have. Still, really: Martin's not stupid. He knows.

He knew.

For now it's enough to have this, to have despite all apparent odds managed honesty and survived it. And Jon's in his arms, Jon came to him of his own will and is staying, strung curiously between an expression of his function so pure it kind of aches to think much about and the closest Martin thinks he's capable of to taking a break. He is _here_ , scar-mottled skin warm under Martin's fingertips and voice so soft it's hardly real, even if that tone would still be sandpaper coming from anything else. Jon is here and Martin can actually give him something he wants—somehow—just by being what he always should have been.

(“Can I—” Martin starts, after it seems Jon's finally hit a wall, heart in his throat. If Martin's misread him still, well—it's not—he can live with a no, here, that's fine, he just doesn't know where Jon's _no_ s lie now that the landscape of it isn't absolute.)

Martin doesn't know or understand _why_ Jon wants him. He isn't naïve, at least about this, at least not any more: just as he knows on the edge of every exhale that part of Jon (all of Jon) can never not be his eventual adversary, Martin knows the Archivist barely needs to ask him to get what he's actually learning here. He is almost sure Jon knows Martin wouldn't even resent it. Jon doesn't _have_ to kiss him for his answers, or score his teeth over the thin skin of Martin's neck until he can't breathe enough to speak, or push him down onto the bed with an odd balance of hesitation and inevitable curiosity. He doesn't need that just to know. So he must want to.

(“Yes,” Jon says, startled, slowly blinking more than enough for Martin to still hold back until he's sure he's watched Jon cross back into certainty and trace annoyance. “I—yes. I've never—I mean. That could be interesting.”)

And Martin doesn't for the life of him understand why Jon wants this, but that's fine. That's okay. He doesn't have to.

(The idea of rendering Jon speechless for a _good_ reason had been pretty much unimaginable. Martin does his best to memorize the reality of it in front of him, but—he'll have other chances, he thinks. He'll do this again.)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m canon-typical-violence (in general) / wheretheverminplay (fic progress! see the other 20!) on tumblr. 
> 
> Talk to me about the special interest and tell me what you like and stuff! I promise I won’t get excited enough to literally eat my phone. Just figuratively. Like you do.


End file.
